Surgical Prayer

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Introduction

Iwas just about to attend another of our many prayer meetings in the church, and was feeling nauseous; I couldn’t understand why something so powerful for so many, and so beautiful for some, was such drudgery for me. In spite of the fact that I was pastoring a growing congregation of more than 3,000 members at this time, and was encouraging people to pray and intercede for all kinds of things, I still dreaded our corporate prayer meetings. My teaching on prayer was sound and the principles of prayer were fully understood. In fact our prayer meetings were well attended by most church standards, with between 50 to 100 people attending twice a week, on a Friday morning and a Monday night, as well as many intermittent and unscheduled times of prayer both in and out of the church.

Part of my dilemma as pastor was watching those I had encouraged to attend prayer meetings become increasingly disillusioned with prayer. I’d watch and listen as the different members of our congregation poured out their hearts to God about needs felt, perceived, real and urgent. All of the prayers were important to God and the person praying, but they all seemed so disconnected. A housewife would pour out her heart to God regarding the educational needs of her children and the children of the nation, or a farmer appeal for God’s intervention so he and his family would not be removed from their farm, whilst the business people of the church would stand by waiting to have their chance. Their burden was to address the Lord, and secure the agreement of the corporate gathering, for the national needs of commerce and industry that was under the attack of sinister forces of corruption and graft.

I consoled myself with the fact that we should be able to wait on the needs of other people even if it had no relevance to our situation, and I exhorted those who attended to be patient while prayers that were not of interest and in their circle of need or influence were being offered to the Lord. The problem was that certain needs stirred my spirit and struck a chord in my heart, while other prayers put me to sleep and quite frankly were of little or no interest to me or many of those I had assembled to pray.

At one point I thought that praying in tongues might solve this dilemma, so for a while we just spoke in tongues for the hour. I tried to convince myself that this was really being effective, but whether we prayed in our understanding, each one alternately speaking out our heartfelt concerns, or spoke in tongues corporately, the desperation within me mounted. With the vision of reformation pounding through my spirit, and pressure mounting from the escalating needs of a nation being torn apart by political unrest, corruption, economic upheaval, and disillusionment, I cried out, God this is so ineffective!

In the midst of this uneasy and agitated scenario, during an especially anointed Sunday morning service, I heard myself prophesying. I declared that there would be an increase in prayer in our church, and to cater for it we would pray on a daily basis. So our intercessors went into action and began daily prayer meetings. Now, this had to either be God, or ignorance gone to seed!

Multiplying what wasn’t working and expecting a different result is foolishness. I attended for one week and knew that either I had to change, or our prayer meetings had to change.

Since that time I have seen lack-luster, misled and misdirected prayer turn into the driving force behind a movement for reformation in our nation. I’m convinced that the principles and precepts that are laid out in the pages of this book will prove to be invaluable to those who are struggling with corporate prayer as I did. May the Holy Spirit help you to lay hold of these practical and effective keys that have transformed my prayer life and have changed large numbers of my church members into a forceful army of intelligent, focused and surgically sharp intercessors.

This book is the story of the changes that took place in me and consequently in the prayer ministry. We are now seeing the effect in our church, our families, our businesses and the nation.

PART ONE

A Transformed Prayer Life

The greatest will he be of reformers and apostles, who can set the Church to praying.

Martin Luther

Chapter 1

Why Surgical Prayer?

Why another book on prayer? After all, there is already a plethora of information and books on prayer. Through the years I have been bombarded with prayer books, prayer seminars, prayer workshops, instructions on prayer walking, prayer mapping, the 10/40 window — the list is endless. Although I could see tremendous value in the truths contained in all this material, only a handful of people, in my church, were responding to the prayer concepts put forward. Why was this? This question would eventually lead me to change the way I think and feel about prayer, and eventually write what you are reading in this book.

Zimbabwe

I saw that as Zimbabwe, the nation I had chosen to serve God in, went through seasons of drought, political unrest and economic recession, people were stirred to pray more. The greater the social upheaval the more intense was our desire to pray. Prayer increased within our church, within the city and within the nation, in direct proportion to the perceived and real needs. However, as soon as there was a return to some semblance of normality, prayer meetings dwindled in number to a few faithful intercessors. There seemed to be no prolonged strategy of prayer that could sustain a quorum. My frustration mounted, fueled by so many unfocused prayer meetings, driving me to seek the Lord. What follows in the next few chapters is the strategy I believe God gave me.

Why Surgical Prayer? This was God’s response to my desperation with our erratic corporate prayer. It describes the strategy for our church’s growth in kingdom prayer and came as I was watching an international news report talking about surgical air-strikes. The presenter described and compared the use of smart bombs, with what he referred to as, dumb bombs and carpet bombing. The whole emphasis centered around how this new technology worked and how the resultant outcome was a phenomenal improvement in successful strike rate. The reporter said something that radically changed my life, These bombs have surgical accuracy. We now live in the day of surgical warfare. We can go in and surgically remove one person and leave the rest of the civilian population untouched. I was overawed at how warfare had developed, and as I continued watching, I heard God say to me, That’s what I want in prayer — surgical accuracy. The realization dawned on me of how often we have wielded a broad sword in prayer, instead of a sharp, precise surgical instrument.

Again a few years later, I was watching a television program explaining how people had learned to build deeper bunkers to escape the smart bombs. I wondered how technology could possibly overcome this new defense. Almost as soon as my query arose, the presenter went on to describe a new smart bomb, which they called a bunker buster, devised especially to deal with these deep bunkers. A bunker-buster is a bomb weighing between 500-900 kilograms that uses smart bomb technology, which makes it surgically accurate, but with the power to destroy an underground bunker. Once again I heard God say, I want to teach the church how to pray bunker-buster" prayers, prayers which are both accurate and powerful.

A skilled surgeon will take a surgical instrument, like a scalpel, and use it carefully and deliberately in the service of healing. That same scalpel in unskilled hands could cause untold injury and damage.

Prayer, like the smart bomb, when directed with purpose and intent, will always hit the mark, just as the scalpel in the hand of a surgeon will bring about precise and intended results.

In contrast to smart bombs or skilled surgery, many of our corporate prayer meetings comprised groups of individuals, each praying for their perception of the prayer needs of the church, city or nation, or for their own personal needs, and expecting others to listen and agree with them. The effect was the difference between a shotgun blast and the shot of a sniper, between a carpet bomb and a smart bomb, or a bunker-buster. I now appreciated why I was frustrated with our non-directed prayer meetings, and was prepared to receive a blueprint for expansion of our corporate prayer.

Building People Building Dreams, Transforming Lives Reforming Nations

Our strategy rolled out into what we now call Kingdom or domain prayer. This strategy focuses on twelve domains or spheres of influence in our society, which I will elaborate on in the chapters to come. My intention was to empower the vision of our church, which is "building people, building dreams; transforming lives, reforming nations," thus making prayer more practical and contagious. I wanted to see the whole congregation influenced not just the intercessors and pastors.

The early reformer, Martin Luther, once said, If the Gospel does not address issues of the day, then it is no Gospel at all. His statement echoes our desire and mandate to address the issues of the day with the power of the Gospel. In the Great Commission Jesus gave us the commandment to preach the Gospel to every creature…and disciple all nations (Mark 16:15, Matthew 24:14, Matthew 28:19,20).

God was calling our church to a new season, a new strategy and a new level of corporate prayer, that had to be matched with bold, biblical action. He was giving us new keys and ideas, as to how we could mobilize and multiply more people to pray intentionally and powerfully; people who were determined to live by conviction, based on biblical pattern and principle, in each of the domains.

God was challenging and reminding all of us that the goal of the church and missions worldwide is not just salvation of souls and global evangelism, but it is to disciple and impact nations with the Gospel of the Kingdom of God in every sphere of life. God had given me a mandate to build a church, a family of believers, that would bring about transformation and reformation in Africa and affect the world, starting in Zimbabwe. In order to accomplish this in the context in which we found ourselves, our church congregation would need to challenge and change the increasing corruption, hopelessness, deep-seated cultural mind-sets and lifestyles that Zimbabwe and Africa were facing. This meant we were going to have to both work out that change within ourselves and also adjust our focus.

God had already given our church congregation a prophetic and apostolic mandate to be a house of prayer for all nations (Isaiah 56:7). It was time to move from being a growing, influential church with only a few seasoned intercessors to becoming a strategic, praying church body that was aggressively and effectively influencing all spheres of life, not just spiritually, but visibly and practically. It was time for the Church and its members to be living witnesses in the market-place; it was time to shake the salt from the salt shaker. We could no longer afford the luxury, or should I say deception, of being one thing in the Church and something different in the world. I say deception because this divided reality produces powerless and deluded lives, unable and in truth unwilling, to influence anyone or anything for the Kingdom of God.

I knew that God was calling us to rediscover the power and influence of His Kingdom Gospel through a bold, new Kingdom Prayer strategy that would affect every area of society, not just the Church. We had seen and experienced God’s supernatural provision in the 1990’s and early part of the new millennium, as we had actively pursued the principles of prosperity and were able to build and pay cash for our world-class, 150,000 square- foot, church building. Although this was a fourteen year ordeal, our congregation and many of our key business people prospered as they applied God’s principles of faith, first fruits, tithing and Kingdom stewardship, and saw their own businesses established as they first built God’s House. The irony was that while we were building, growing and prospering as a church, Zimbabwe as a nation, was in the middle of chaos. She was suffering her most severe drought, which, combined with unstable political and critical economic conditions, was compounded only by the ever-increasing HIV and AIDS pandemic.

I realized that not only was Zimbabwe facing disaster in every social domain, but the majority of traditional and evangelical churches in the nation were still deeply divided, racially and, politically, as well as denominationally.

The situation demanded we take greater dominion and authority in the many areas of life we had previously abdicated or ignored. It was not enough to just pray. We needed more truth and definitely more action. In spite of the mounting hardships Zimbabwe was facing, the economic meltdown, scorning and sanctions by the European Union (EU), the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as the ever mounting HIV and AIDS and orphan statistics, God wanted to do something extraordinary in Zimbabwe. Although it seemed we had been forgotten by the outside world and surrounding nations; God had Zimbabwe right in the forefront.

The media and news reports were anything but positive. An aggressive land reform exercise yielded nothing but chaos, large scale hunger and unemployment. There was a mass exodus of Zimbabweans of all races, to pastures thought to be greener or at least safer. The country was struggling under the burden of escalating inflation moving from 500% to an estimated 2 million% and climbing inflation, 80% unemployment, the health and banking sectors on the brink of virtual collapse, a 30% HIV and AIDS infection rate, and over one million children orphaned and destitute. If there ever was a such a time as this for God to intervene and deliver a nation, it was now.

It was in this context that God spoke to me about raising up apostolic people from the key sectors of the nation with a biblical world view, radical faith in His promises and principles, and a passion and purpose to influence every sphere of life with the Kingdom of God.

Chapter 2

Spheres of Influence

God’s reformation process is returning power to the Church. One of the keys to reformation is changing our mind-sets and transforming our world views. As Christians we have every reason for winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the people of the world and possessing the nations as our inheritance (Psalm 2:8 NKJV), but we must use God’s Kingdom weapons to wage war and not those of the world.

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world [God has given them to us]. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

We [must first expose, then] demolish [all] arguments [philosophies, ideas, theories, lies, worldviews] and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:4,5 (NIV)

Do not be conformed to this world this age, [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs]. But be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing that is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].

Romans 12:2 (AMP)

In our desire to see a biblical world view and Kingdom reformation advance in Africa we knew we must begin to think and act like God in relation to all spheres of society. So many Christians today suffer from split personalities. Their lives are divided into compartments: the religious or sacred, what they do, like attending church or a prayer meeting or a Bible